Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today Bonni episode number 513 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, How to Develop MicroSkills – Small Actions for Big Impact with Adaira Landry and Resa Lewiss.

Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. Coming back to Teaching in Higher Ed today are Adaira Landry and Resa Lewiss. Adaira is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She studied and trained at the University of California Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, New York University, and Harvard.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:13]:

She’s got almost a decade of experience mentoring students and early career professionals. Adaira is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and award winning mentor. She cofounded Writing in Color, a nonprofit that teaches the craft of writing. Resa Lewiss is a professor of emergency medicine, TED med speaker, Time’s Up Healthcare founder, designer, entrepreneur, and award winning educator, mentor, and point of care ultrasound specialist. She studied at Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the NIH Howard Hughes Research Scholars Program, Harvard Emergency Medicine, and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Roosevelt. She hosts the Visible Voices podcast, amplifying content in the health care, equity, and current trends spaces. Together, Adaira and Resa have written for NBC, Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Nature, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Science, Slate, STAT News, Teen Vogue, Vogue, and USA Today.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:28]:

They’ve been quoted and featured in The Guardian, The HuffPost, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Resa and Adaira, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Adaira Landry [00:02:39]:

Thanks so much for having us.

Resa Lewiss [00:02:40]:

We are delighted to be here.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:42]:

I am a huge fan of small things. I love the adrienne maree brown quote where she says, small is all. I love the book, small teaching by James Lang. And now the 2 of you have introduced me to and shared with me micro skills, your new book. Why would you wanna focus on small things? Do you also share this love of small things like I do?

Resa Lewiss [00:03:09]:

I don’t mind starting saying I love small things. I love that no is a complete sentence. I like to drink espresso, which is a small amount of coffee, but yet it gives you the zing and the pop. Dave and I had a real clear reason for why we decided to talk about breaking big tasks, big goals, big fill in the blank into small pieces, small parts, or in this case, micro skills. And there are many ways to approach it. I’ll start by thinking for the audience to just orient them. Think about knowing how to tie your shoe. Now my reference may be a little dated because these days everybody has slip ons or maybe even Velcro if you’re a little kid, but it used to be a big deal to learn how to tie your shoe.

Resa Lewiss [00:03:53]:

And it’s quite a complicated task, and it’s multi stepped. And so if you think about it, there’s open up the shoe, loosen the tongue, loosen the laces, slip your foot in, make sure your heel drops, pull one set of laces, pull the other set or more the other side, pull them tight, cross it over, and so on and so on. So these many, many steps add up. They’re additive to one ultimate goal, which is tying your shoe. And we believe that approach can be applied in the workplace to be better and to not feel overwhelmed by things that seem undoable.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:32]:

Yeah. Adaira, what stood out to you for focusing on the micro?

Adaira Landry [00:04:35]:

Well, I think when I think back to my early career, and I saw other people doing really well, just getting large grants or being recognized in some way, getting promotions, it just seemed like this huge step for myself. Like, how do I do that? Like, how like, how do I move to the next level? There was no clear path or guide. And so I think without any sort of route to get there, it just seemed like it was impossible to do. And I had this conversation, and Resa had a similar conversation with a colleague as well. So independent of each other, we both have had this same conversation where I I spoke with a colleague and I said, how is it possible that you’re getting all of these awards and promotions? How are you finding people? And and they’re able to just nominate you for things, and they’re just able to sponsor you and put you up for stuff. And they looked at me and they said, Adaira, I I am doing this myself. I write my own letters of recommendation. And that was probably the first concrete strategic piece of advice I had ever get, I had ever received from someone that was aligned with this is how you move to the next step.

Adaira Landry [00:05:50]:

You stop waiting for people. You start nominating yourself. You start drafting your own letters of recommendation. So all of those small steps are how you really get to those next big, big, big lofty goals that we have. And I think when we were thinking about the book, we read a lot of other books. Right? Because you have to you know, when you get your agent, you have to have a a proposal, and in there, you have to have comparative titles. And so we read a lot of books. And even before this book, we read a lot of leadership self help business books.

Adaira Landry [00:06:22]:

And one thing stood out, which was that there were a lot of large recommendations, large assumptions about the reader. Right? So if you’re reading a book about perhaps financial planning, they might just say, go get a financial adviser. Well, a, there are different types of financial advisers. What is it that I’m asking this person? How do I know they’re a good person versus a crook? Like, what are the red the red flags or the warning signs? Right? So there are all these small nuances that I that we felt were potentially or not potentially frequently assumed in many of these books that are supposed to help you be better. So we really wanted it to be small, small skills that were very actionable, concrete, easy to implement now. That was a very important goal for us.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:06]:

You reminded me a bit there of that quote, which I I don’t know who has said it. I think thousands of people have said this, your job can’t love you back. Mhmm. And you start out the book focusing on self care. And one of the principles that you thread throughout it is just this idea of time. And you say it so frequently and so simply, but my mind turns to mush a little bit because it’s just hard for me to wrap my head around it that that we can’t get it back. And usually when I think about us not being able to get it back, it’s a really stressful feeling, but that wasn’t the feeling I got when I read your words. My mind wanted to take me to the you’re never getting this back.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:47]:

You’re never getting this back and it being a stressful thing, but the 2 of you were speaking to me of just you can’t get it back and so. So because we can’t get it back, what would be a few techniques, and you have so many in the book, but a few techniques that we might use in terms of managing that precious investment of time. Maybe we could start with just talking about calendars or meetings, your call.

Adaira Landry [00:08:10]:

Well, I wanna just start just start with just giving some context as to why we think time is so important if that’s okay, and then we’ll get into the strategy.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:17]:

Yeah.

Adaira Landry [00:08:17]:

Resa and I work in a field, emergency medicine where we see people who are who receive very abrupt, sometimes life threatening or devastating or changing news where they thought they had more time to live the life that they previously had. And we see that very often. And it’s a a constant reminder involuntary reminder, it feels like, that we have to be strategic with the time we are given. Right? And so for both of us in in academia, especially, you could just keep putting in time and time and time to your job. It’s, like, so easy to say, I’m going to sign up for something. I know I’m not being paid for it. I know no one’s acknowledging that work. I know it’s not going to lead to promotion.

Adaira Landry [00:09:04]:

I know it’s not even gonna make me feel better, but I’m still gonna do it because perhaps it’s the right thing or it’s expected of me. So it’s very easy to do those things. And Reese and I, probably, on our own, came to our, like, pivotal moment where we said, oh my gosh. I need to be more mindful of how I’m spending my time. I I I think we had a moment where we said, oh my gosh. We need to be more strategic. For me, it it’s the calendar is is 6 to 9 PM. That is, like, really hard time with my kids, with my husband, dinner, household duties.

Adaira Landry [00:09:36]:

And so that was, like, the first part of my calendar that I said I I have to start blocking this off because trying to double up, triple up activities while my kids are awake, it just doesn’t work. They hear me doing stuff. Now it’s fun to them to interrupt me. All these reasons. Right? So I started blocking off the time frames that I just knew caused stress. And when mommy is less stressed, everybody’s happy. Right? And so and just in general, that’s like a philosophy I live by is like when I choose to be less stressed, it’s better for my kids. So for me, it was like blocking out that 6 to 9 window.

Resa Lewiss [00:10:14]:

And I’ll give one

Adaira Landry [00:10:14]:

more, then I’ll give it to reset. Yeah. Then after that, I started blocking out weekends, literally, where, like, if someone says, hey. Can you come give a talk on Saturday? I say, is there a Friday available? Because I can’t do Saturday, Sundays. I’m with my kids. That’s my protected time. And, again, if I’m, like, leaving my kids with my husband, that’s unfair to him. So especially if it’s optional work.

Adaira Landry [00:10:35]:

So I started thinking about the time frames that are sacred to me and really, really protecting those.

Resa Lewiss [00:10:41]:

And Bonni, I really appreciate this question, and you tied together many items that we touch upon in the book. So we start out at the beginning and give the frame to the reader of talking about the self, the team, the work. And we also talk about these truths. And one of the truths surrounds time, that time can only be spent. And you can think about it as a currency, except you can’t put it in a savings account. It just is spent. And so we encourage the readers and we’re talking to ourselves as well. We have to be careful.

Resa Lewiss [00:11:18]:

We have to be deliberate. And I really got Bonni this this whole thing of deliberate practice and deliberate rest. I was definitely one of those people that burned the midnight oil. I believed, you know, I could work for 12 hours and the mo the longer and the more I worked, the more I got done. And then I really am a big reader. And I started reading books on efficiency and about working smarter and about managing time. And I realized the importance of rest. And rest is not just sleep.

Resa Lewiss [00:11:51]:

That’s one though in terms of self care and health. There’s also naps. Sure. But we can get outside the category. Rest is actually having dinner and socializing with friends. Rest is taking a walk in nature. Rest can be exercise. There’s many things that can be.

Resa Lewiss [00:12:06]:

And taking those intentional deliberate breaks makes you even more effective and efficient at work. And it’s so it’s not a time, it’s a how you utilize that time. And I’ll give you one on meetings. I soon realized in academics that you can just be in meetings all day long and you actually don’t get anything done. So I also saw that a 1 hour meeting would always take an hour. A 15 minute meeting, everything got done in 15 minutes. So time expands to what is allotted. So one of the skills that we talk about in the book about managing time and managing calendar is a 1 hour meeting could be 30 minutes.

Resa Lewiss [00:12:48]:

A 30 minute meeting could be 20 minutes. And when you ask someone to meet with you for 20 minutes, that feels like such a small ask as opposed to saying, do do you have an hour that you can give me? An hour is a lot of time.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:01]:

I love what you said, and can you say it so much in the book, time can only be spent. And then coupling that with Adaira’s advice, though, to block things out in your calendar, to me, that feels almost like a reverse savings account. So I can save it, but only if I’m doing it in the future where I’m carving out those boundaries for myself. And boundaries, of course, a big thing that comes up many times on this podcast and and so much of the the more casual discourse is around saying no. And we can have such a hard time saying no. What advice do you have for us to get better at this skill? How can we be deliberate, as you said, and and practice the skill and any creative ways you can help us think through this better?

Resa Lewiss [00:13:43]:

You know, as we wrote this book, we learned a lot from each other. And Adaira taught me one that we talk about in the book. In academics, academics will take and take and take and take. So Bonni, you referenced this, your work, your hospital, your department, your industry will not love you back, and that’s very true. And I’ve known many colleague friends that I’ve spoken with when they’ve had this devastating realization that their institution didn’t love them back. So we do repeat that and talk about that and what that means in the book. But when it comes to academics and academic medicine, and to be clear, our book is for all people, all industries. We really think these truisms go across and work will take and take and take and take, so you have to set the boundaries.

Resa Lewiss [00:14:33]:

And in academics, we are told to always say yes. Early in your career, you should always say yes, every opportunity, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But then at some point, things change. People are like, Oh, no, you have to learn how to say no. And so number 1, that’s a a switch. Like, how do you learn that if you don’t know that? But there are ways if you are approached, for example, with an opportunity and you’re not sure, or actually you know you are sure, but you don’t Bonni say no because you don’t wanna burn a bridge, you don’t want the opportunity taken away from you. Adaira is the one that brought this up, and I love this. She says, can you tell me more? Or you know what? Thank you, and I’m gonna get back to you in a few days.

Resa Lewiss [00:15:11]:

In other words, rarely do you have to make an emergent decision. Like, this is not emergency medicine often. This is a you have time, you have more time, and you can think about how you want to respond, how you wanna navigate, and maybe how you wanna go look at your pile of timelines and your calendar.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:31]:

I love that. Can you tell me more? Dara, can you tell me more? Is there anything else you wanna share about this question that

Adaira Landry [00:15:38]:

we wanna ask that? Yeah. It’s because you’re looking for the red flags. You’re looking for all the things that aren’t being told to you up front like, oh, by the way, there’s no funding. And that admin support you thought you might have, you don’t. And also, instead of needing it next week, I need it tomorrow. Right? So all of those things, like asking them, tell me more. What when’s the deadline? Is there support? Who’s gonna be the the end user or the customer for this opportunity? Right? You wanna know those things, and then you sort of say, let me think about this. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

Adaira Landry [00:16:12]:

Is that okay? And as Resa said, if someone says, no, you need to tell me right now, that in itself is almost a red flag. Right? Because most things, you have time to wait.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:22]:

I was thinking about it at my university, and at most, there are somewhere around 4 broad categories that you’ll be evaluated on for things like progress toward promotion or tenure, or maybe it’s a full professor rank. And if you could ask a question about how does this help fit in with those things. Adaira, you were talking about things that don’t you know, aren’t going to count, and I’m I’m putting count in air quotes, but no one can see me right now. But that’s the thing where if we I I do think this broad, can you tell me more? And then if I don’t get specifics about how that fits in with that, essentially, then I guess what was coming down to is you’re asking me to volunteer my time. And I actually do have another volunteer commitment that I’ve made right now, and I’m committed to a certain number of hours, I’m not gonna be able to take anything additional. Of course, we we might not actually use the word volunteer, but it could be right there in the undercurrent of of just that’s since I this is an investment, and I can’t get it back, you know, just a healthy way. That’s really helpful. There was another technique that you reminded me of, and someone actually practiced it recently, and I thought, boy, I need to teach this to the business students I get to teach.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:32]:

And this is around the BCC. And I feel like the BCC and in case people aren’t familiar with the acronym, this is the blind carbon copy feature of emails. I feel like it got a bad rap because when I was early in my business career, it was always you did that to cover your your tushy as the as the polite saying goes. So you would you would only be cc in a in a passive aggressive way. And I I got to tell you, the second you ever witnessed someone forgetting that someone is on a cc that wasn’t supposed to be, then you just pretty much try to write emails that could be public at any time and and would be able to be representative of your character and the things you’d wanna communicate to the world. But nonetheless, there is, I feel like, a new way we could think about BCC having to do with saving not just our time, but other people’s time. Could you talk about this technique, what it is, and why we might want to make use of it?

Adaira Landry [00:18:25]:

Yeah. I can start, and I’ll I’ll give a high level overview. So the entire goal is to be compassionate with how we email each other and to try to protect the inbox. So we’re thinking about it from the standpoint of protecting the recipient’s inbox as well as yours. And so even just today, we sent out, you know, a massive email to our listserv. And instead of just sending it to the 100 and however many people on the two line, we sent it out to every we we we put that entire group of people on the BCC. So they’re all getting the same email, but they’re not necessarily communicating with each other because they can’t see each other. They can only see my name and Reese’s name because we’re on the to or cc line.

Adaira Landry [00:19:10]:

It helps keep them from being able to reply all to everyone else on that list. And that keeps those, you know, threads of, I got it. I’ll be there. Sorry. Can’t go. That’ll pick up the kids. All of those threads from people you don’t know in a different department from coming into your inbox. That’s probably the biggest use case where, like, everyone just needs the same email and they don’t have to communicate with each other when they get that information.

Adaira Landry [00:19:37]:

Just put them all in the bcc. And one thing that I do so it doesn’t seem secretive or anything like that is I just address it. I just say, hey, medical students or 2nd year medical students, and then they they all know that that’s who I’m emailing versus not having that that line where you address who’s there. So I just address who’s in that that group, and I send that massive email.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:58]:

Yeah. I think it’s so good to remember that upfront, we can just say this email is going out to all of our adjunct faculty and then it’s implied in the BCC so we don’t get the reply all. I really appreciate the approach you also talked about with regard to when you’re expanding your network, and you might be introducing someone to another person. And it’s kinda like, I’m trying to think of the expression where, like, I’m gonna quietly leave the room, but could you talk about using it as a, I’m gonna step out of this because now the connection has been made?

Resa Lewiss [00:20:29]:

You teed me up, Bonni, because just yesterday, this exact thing happened. So I have a colleague friend who’s a chair, and she asked if I’d be willing to meet with her faculty member over ultrasound. So within emergency medicine, both Adaire and I have done advanced training in the use of ultrasound for patient care. And she reached out to me and included the faculty member in the email. I replied to him. I placed her in the BCC, and so I said, dear so and so, be glad to meet. How is next week? I gave some specific days, specific time windows, and I wrote my friend’s name in in BCC. So he knew that she was gonna, quote, see a copy of this.

Resa Lewiss [00:21:15]:

She will see a copy of it, and I respectfully removed her because she is a chairperson and very busy and does not need more email clogging her inbox.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:21:25]:

Yeah. But then it’s nice because she gets the loop closed to know that you did get back to that person and that that communication loop has taken. One other broad area that you talk about has to do with managing our reputation, and you share advice that, to me, feels so counterintuitive and also transformative, and that has to do with sharing our failures. Most people would think we should avoid doing that. You give us a little bit of some different kind of advice around this.

Adaira Landry [00:21:56]:

Yeah. I I think, you know, we’re all human, and failing is a human experience. We all go through it. And what I believe is really inspiring is not necessarily seeing someone get every single publication that they’ve ever gone through, but when someone can actually reveal in conversation 1 on 1 or in a large group setting, these are the things that I have struggled with. This is what I find hard because it makes that person approachable. And I I have learned from many people older, wiser, more experienced than I am, that vulnerability is actually a strength. It’s an asset. It’s a skill, And it really shouldn’t be stigmatized to reveal, hey.

Adaira Landry [00:22:43]:

I’m struggling with work, my family, with my health, with anything. You know, I I wouldn’t want people to go out of their way and and do it in a way that makes them feel very uncomfortable and and lacking any sort of authenticity. So we do recommend, you know, titrating it to your comfort, and you can start off small by just saying something to someone you trust. Like, hey. I didn’t get something I was really aspiring to to get, and I’m feeling really down about that. That again opens the conversation. And I and actually, I personally believe, yes, we connect through wins, but I I thought I connect more with people when I know that they have struggled similarly.

Resa Lewiss [00:23:21]:

And we know that making believe everything is perfect, and there’s no room for error or mistakes, never mind admitting those doesn’t do well. And this is Bonni to be a little bit of a dark statistic, but rates of physician suicide are 2 times that of the general population. And that’s because medicine has had a big problem with showing vulnerability, admitting failure, admitting mistakes. And thank goodness we’ve seen a change in that tide in terms of there being less stigma. And I think that’s what sort of the word is here, a stigma. We both believe, I guess all 3 of us believe, that we need to sort of get rid of that stigma. And it doesn’t need to be as extreme as what I spoke about in terms of physician suicide, but it can cause people to go into dark places if they think they’re alone, if they think they’re marginalized. And this goes back to our commitment to belonging in the workplace.

Resa Lewiss [00:24:20]:

So it’s vitally important.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:23]:

The way that I took in your your words throughout your writing was in a, yes, be vulnerable. I almost you’re doing it for a purpose. I I took it as well, you’re sort sort of this responsibility, especially once one has some power and some privilege. Perhaps you’re in a leadership role, perhaps you are an educator and such that that then when you can help use that toward helping other people feel a sense of belonging, a sense that they matter, that that’s really where it can come in. I think oftentimes this we’re always coming back to our conversation about saying no. Women and people from historically marginalized populations, you know, it’s easy to sit here and say, oh, no. Say no to the panel on women at work or whatever that actually doesn’t tie in with your research goals or any of those things. It’s easy to say that.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:25:16]:

So I think maybe as we progress along in our careers, it becomes one way of moderating it that that, yeah, this might be my time to to start to use some of those stories in powerful ways. I I had a I mean, I’ve had a number of difficult times in my career that we don’t have time to get into during this brief podcast, but I have shared on it, the podcast. But every year that goes by, the pain is a little bit less, and the more of a responsibility that I feel that those stories become particularly relevant for faculty who I might be coaching or guiding in some way. So yeah. Alright. There’s one you’re gonna have to spoil me on this one. I think most people listening are gonna know this, but maybe we just need a little reminder or 2. Would you talk to us about that on being a team player doesn’t mean showing up to work when we are ill?

Adaira Landry [00:26:05]:

Oh, yeah. I mean, we had to we had to include this as physicians, and I’m not even speaking about it from the fact that we take care of patients who are ill, but because as physicians, we have been cultured, groomed, brainwashed, led, whatever word you wanna use, to believe that we should work even when we’re ill and that actually some people brag about that. Like I I have seen so many people on social media and also just in 1 on 1 direct conversation say, I’ve never called in sick. I I worked while I had the flu, while I had appendicitis, while I had pancreatitis. That’s how strong I am. And I’m not you know, I understand that that they feel confident and proud of themselves because they were in the same culture that I was in, which is that you wanna work really hard and show that you are tough and strong and that you are really dedicated as a physician. But in truth, that sort of culture propagates us neglecting ourselves, and then that leads to burnout, and then that leads to attrition or or or depression and suicide. There’s, like, much bigger consequences that occur that could have been avoided if that person just called in sick.

Adaira Landry [00:27:22]:

And when they came back to work, they said, man, I am so glad I took care of myself. If you ever get sick, you should do the same thing. Call in. That’s why we have a sick call policy.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:31]:

For the last segment of this part of the podcast, I would love to have you advise us a little bit on finding new opportunities and specifically learning how to transfer our skills. People listening to this podcast are usually working in a higher education context, but some people have moved on either from their own choices or because that their the job wasn’t sustained or funded at their institution. And I I just think you have such valuable things to share with us on an ongoing basis to be taking what we’re experiencing and transferring those skills to other opportunities.

Adaira Landry [00:28:12]:

I’ll start with, just even recognizing and collecting opportunities, and then maybe Resa can talk about the second half of that question. So for me, social media has been transformative in not the the way you might think about it, which is like posting pictures of myself or my food or anything like that. That part is not as important to me. But I I I really like to be very passively observant. I love to see what other people are posting and seeing what other opportunities are out there, and I can do that much faster than if I were to wait for an annual conference and to check up on folks and see what they Dave been up to for the last year. So, know, you can sort of see the landscape of your field if you’re on social media because you can see what people are posting and what opportunities they’re getting and where they’ve gotten new what new jobs they have and those sorts of things. What I do after that is honestly, for me, very helpful, which is that I I like save those opportunities in in some way, shape, or form. So if it’s a website for instance that I’m linked to when I see something, I like drag it to a folder on my my bar, like with the the web browser bar.

Adaira Landry [00:29:20]:

I have a little folder there that’s just called future opportunities, and I just drag the website down. You can save it so that if I’m ever like, what do I wanna do next with my life? I can go back and see all of these prior opportunities. And you could even catalog them like speaking opportunities, grants, conferences that I Bonni attend one day. And so it’s just a nice way of banking those so that at that point in life where you say, I need an a fresh start. What what what can I do? There’s some inspiration there for you.

Resa Lewiss [00:29:48]:

We know it’s like to feel stuck, and we also know what it’s like for people to think, well, I trained in this. My degree’s in that. This is, quote, all I can do. Adaira and I are examples of people who are trained physicians, and we do more than just doctor. So we write, we speak. Adaira started a not for profit. I started a podcast. I’ve been working in the healthcare design space.

Resa Lewiss [00:30:15]:

There are so many things you can do. And one way to start for any listeners that do feel stuck is take a look at your resume, take a look at your CV, look at all the skills and accomplishments you’ve accumulated. And sometimes you don’t know how your skills and all that you’ve learned translate until you make a move, until you speak to someone else in a different industry. But everything that you’ve done up to this date contributes to where you can go next.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:48]:

What I appreciate about both of you and your ways that you model this in your work is that I I don’t have the sense about you that it’s just a free for all. I do sense this intentionality behind, yes, I am a physician. And there’s this whole world of personal branding and your own reputations as physicians. And then, yes, I started this not for profit for authors and there’s this whole personal branding around that, but my brain doesn’t get confused because there’s 3 or 4 things I might associate with each of you. And I think if we if we try to avoid having just one thing that people think of, I am a professor at x college. That’s that’s gonna be pretty limiting if either you make that choice to want to be in a different environment or if that choice gets made for you if there’s not some other things. And then I’ll also back to just the conversations about balance and renewal that that if we’re so myopically focused, that’s I don’t know. Not really any way to live.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:51]:

So I don’t I don’t know if any of you, before we go to the recommendation segment, wanna have one last thought about just thinking with intentionality about this different areas of interest that maybe aren’t the main thing that’s paying the paycheck?

Adaira Landry [00:32:03]:

Well, a a lot of that is born from the phrase, say yes to everything. Mhmm. And we are sort of encouraged to accept what comes your way because you never know what’s gonna be the nest the next best opportunity. Right? The next big thing, and God forbid, you you pass on an opportunity that really could have, like, skyrocketed your career. So a lot of that is born out of this anxiety of, like, what if I miss something that is just wonderful? And I’ve been there. I I would say that’s probably my my residency fellowship era where I would say yes to in literally almost anything that came my way. And what happened was that I wasn’t moving fast because I was just doing a little bit of a little bit of time on this project, a little bit on on this project, and I was missing deadline. It was just a hot mess because I wasn’t as organized and strategic.

Adaira Landry [00:32:57]:

And And so when I went from, you know, say yes to everything to tell me more, I was able to really be more thoughtful and intentional about what I actually spend my time on. So I I think it’s a natural progression. So I don’t wanna shame anyone who feels like, yes, I’m a little bit everywhere or or I’m nowhere at all and I’m stuck. Those are both pretty common occurrences, but I but I do think being strategic about what you say yes to, exposing yourself to opportunity, looking at those opportunities in detail is a great first step.

Resa Lewiss [00:33:27]:

And I see it as being born from a liberal arts education. And I’m truly a believer that the more you learn, the more you read on many different topics and have many, many different experiences, the more intentionally, joyfully, and with contentment you can go through life and you can be in the workplace. And also that work can look different for different people, even though they have the same exact training, the same exact title. And so it’s an opportunity to encourage the reader to be creative, to be thoughtful, and to be authentically themselves in how they are doing this thing called life and doing this thing called work and their professional selves.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:08]:

This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations, and I have 3, all 3 of which are time oriented in some way. First off, I wanted to recommend acoustic guitar timers with alarm bells, or you could also choose ones without alarm bells. I first heard about this after attending a workshop with Tolu Noah, and she was presenting on Zoom, and she had us doing an activity. And she set a timer in. It was beautiful. It had acoustic guitar music playing, and it was indicating how much time was left. And I asked her how she went about doing this, and she said, search on YouTube for acoustic guitar timers for Zoom. And the the world is your oyster is all I can say.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:54]:

And, thank you to for that, little tip. I’m gonna be definitely making use of that in the months to come. 2nd time related recommendation I have is called a tick time Pomodoro timer, and it’s a little bit hard to describe because I don’t know basic shapes. I’m like, okay. How many sides? Is this a hectagon? I think it’s a hectagon. So you have the different time options you might wanna set. Do you wanna set a 3 minute timer? Do you wanna set a 5 minute, a 15 minute, 25, a 60 minute timer? And instead of having to mess with it and press a bunch of buttons to decide what you wanna do, you literally just put it on that side. So if I wanna set a 15 minute timer, I just take it and I lay it on its side so that the number 15 is at the top.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:45]:

And if I, go, oh, no, I really wanted 25 minutes, I literally just flip it to the 25. So if the 25 is sitting on top, it resets it, and now it’s a 25 timer. And I had read this article, which I did not. I apologize. I’m about to give medical advice not having done the research, but, NPR is partnering with some university to research the health benefits of just getting up every 25 minutes and walking for 10 minutes. And so they were they were soliciting a lot of people to go through and download some kind of an app and experiment, but I was like, oh, I don’t have time to be part of the experiment, but I could just set my tick time Pomodoro timer for 25 minutes. And as I get into deep focus and deep work, I can lose all track of time. And I’m finding that when I discipline myself, just every 25 minutes, just get up and just stretch for a minute or 2, stand up.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:38]:

I Dave had some problems with my shoulders. So just can we do just a few shoulder stretches before we get back hunkered down and focused and and with joy often, by the way. I’m I’m in that state of flow, but it’s just really working for me, and it’s a very clever analog timer. I mean, it’s I don’t mean to say that it’s analog. It is a digital timer, but it’s not associated with my computer. So it’s it’s a physical device I can hold in my hand, and there’s something that I find I’m enjoying about that. The last one I wanted to recommend is an app, and this app is Mac specific. I don’t know if they have something similar on the PC, but I suspect they probably do.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:14]:

The the app is called in your face. I am a person who can concentrate so much on what I am doing that I will miss every notification that comes in. If it’s off to the side, if it comes up, my brain will just go, oh, that’s the thing that you just click to get away from. So I won’t even process that it’s a meeting, like, oh, there’s a meeting that’s about to start in 5 minutes or whatever. The In Your Face app does not let you forget a meeting because it literally takes over your entire computer. My whole screen gets filled before we started today’s interview. It’s like, takes over and it says, this is starting. You could customize it however you want but this meeting is starting in 5 minutes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:52]:

That’s all the warning that I need for Zoom meetings just to make sure I’m in my seat and ready to go and, ready to interview guests like the 2 of you. So those are my 3 recommendations. And, Resa, I’ll pass it over to you for whatever you’d like to recommend.

Resa Lewiss [00:38:06]:

Great. I’ll just say that I actually do the Pomodoro effect where I do focused practice for 25 minutes, take a 5 minute break, and so on. So I think it’s very effective.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:16]:

Oh, so good to know.

Resa Lewiss [00:38:17]:

So I’ve been doing a bit of a deep dive these days into the food is medicine movement. There’s a whole branch of medicine called lifestyle medicine, which works on the premise that you can treat, prevent, and reverse chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer. And there are 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine, and one is food is medicine. And there in October of this year well, I guess now it’s last year October 2023 in circulation, there was a whole publication on food as medicine and the movement and what it means. And the bottom line is there’s a lot of science to suggest that for health, we should be eating real food, whole foods, not processed foods, not preserved foods, a mostly plant based diet. And there’s a lot of other recommendations, but I always had a sense and I tended to eat this way anyway. But I really didn’t realize how much science is behind it. And I’m currently reading a book called How Not to Age by Michael Greger.

Resa Lewiss [00:39:34]:

And he’s written other New York Times bestsellers, How Not to Die and How Not to Diet. And that’s what I’m into right now.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:43]:

Thank you so much. And, Adaira, what do you have to recommend for us today?

Adaira Landry [00:39:47]:

I I’m in an era of my life where I love just less things in general. So, like, less sound, less stuff less stuff to do. And so I’m gonna recommend, actually, these headphones. They’re they’re they you can get it probably a more affordable version of it, but they’re, like, noise canceling headphones from these ones are from Apple, but I’m sure there are other versions as well, but they’re amazing at a canceling out noise or or minimizing the noise, but also just like playing really good sound for my music. So I like to listen to music actually with very little words, just in general. And so right now, I’m listening to the Oppenheimer soundtrack, like, on repeat. I, like, love it. I, like, just it’s so good, and there’s so many emotions.

Adaira Landry [00:40:29]:

And I’m just impressed by the fact that they recorded it all in 3 Dave, and how a brain can create this sort of music. And then I would say the third thing, just in in line with, like, less, is just less stuff. So we are, like I’m always constantly donating or throwing things away if it’s really garbage. But, like, right now, we’re doing, you know, our winter cleaning, and that is something I recommend to everyone. It’s just trying to have less things in your life or and the things that you do have bring a lot of value and comfort and relaxation.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:00]:

Oh, both of your sets of recommendations are so so much fun to consider going to explore. Thank you so much for that. Thank you for the book, micro skills. I so enjoyed that I got to read it earlier than than some of the other readers. That always feels like such a special thing to me. It’s a real honor to have gotten to see those words, and I loved seeing the acknowledgments that all the people that poured into having it come out into the world. And I’m just so glad I get to be a small sliver of, sharing with people about this important work. And thank you so much for coming back on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Adaira Landry [00:41:34]:

Thank you so much, Bonni.

Resa Lewiss [00:41:35]:

It’s been great.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:39]:

Thanks once again to Adaira Landry and Resa Lewiss for joining me on today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Thanks to each of you for listening. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. If you’ve been listening for a while and would be willing to, I’d love to have you leave a rating or a review on whatever service it is you use to listen to Teaching in Higher Ed so it can help spread the word to other people about teaching in Higher Ed. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.